Tom Willander might be the exact piece the Vancouver Canucks need to give up to land Shane Wright from Seattle.
Willander surprised everyone with how fast he arrived last season, playing just five games in the AHL before sticking with Vancouver.
"I don't think anyone else was really expecting it to be that fast," Willander said recently on the Canucks Insider podcast.
The 21-year-old defenseman posted 5 goals and 16 assists for 21 points over 70 games in his rookie season.
His game dipped as the year wore on, and he finished at a minus-23 rating with just 3 points over his final 10 games.
Wright offers a different kind of value. He took a step back of his own last season under head coach Lane Lambert, posting 12 goals and 27 points over 74 games.
Even with that dip, Wright's long-term outlook still points toward a legitimate second-line center down the road.
Trading him would leave a hole next to Zeev Buium
Other packages built around Jonathan Lekkerimaki or Jake Debrusk have come up too, but neither solves Seattle's actual asking price on its own.
Lekkerimaki managed just 3 points over 13 games last season, hardly the kind of centerpiece Seattle would need to say yes.
Trading Willander would also leave a hole right next to Zeev Buium, Vancouver's other high-end young defenseman on the back end.
Buium posted 6 goals and 20 assists for 26 points over 76 games himself, part of the same young pairing Vancouver has been building around.
No other right-shot prospect in the system profiles as a safe bet to replace what Willander would take with him.
Daily Hive first laid out the full case for this specific framework over the summer.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/shane-wright-welcome-trade-canucks
Whether Vancouver actually pulls the trigger on trading its most promising rookie for an unproven second-line bet is still very much unresolved.
Should the Canucks trade Tom Willander to land Shane Wright?
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